Prover proliferation creates a coordination tax. Every new ZK-Rollup, Validium, or co-processor introduces a new proving system, forcing developers to manage multiple proving backends and fragmenting liquidity and state.
the-modular-blockchain-thesis-explained
Blog
The Cost of Fragmentation in the Prover Ecosystem
The modular blockchain thesis promised efficiency through specialization. Instead, incompatible proof systems across rollups are creating walled gardens, inhibiting liquidity in proof markets, and driving up costs for everyone. This is the fragmentation tax.
introduction
THE FRAGMENTATION TAX
Introduction
The proliferation of specialized provers creates a hidden tax on interoperability and developer velocity.
This is a replay of the bridge wars. The current prover ecosystem mirrors the early L2 bridge landscape, where users faced a maze of options like Arbitrum Bridge and Optimism Gateway. The solution was standardization, not more bridges.
The cost is developer velocity. Building cross-chain or multi-prover applications requires integrating disparate proving schemes from zkSync, Starknet, and Polygon zkEVM. This complexity stifles innovation and increases audit surface area.
Evidence: The Ethereum ecosystem now supports over a dozen active ZK proving systems, each with unique tooling, security assumptions, and trust models, creating a combinatorial integration nightmare.
key-trends
THE COST OF FRAGMENTATION
Executive Summary: The Fragmentation Tax
The proliferation of specialized provers (zkEVM, zkVM, coprocessors) creates massive inefficiency, forcing developers to pay a recurring tax in capital, time, and security.
01
The Capital Sink: Idle Prover Capacity
Every new zk-rollup or L2 must bootstrap its own prover network, leading to massive underutilization. This is a $100M+ annual waste in stranded hardware and staked capital across ecosystems like Polygon zkEVM, zkSync, and Scroll.
- Fixed Costs, Variable Demand: Prover networks are sized for peak load, sitting idle 80% of the time.
- Winner-Take-Most Economics: Smaller chains cannot compete on proving costs, creating a centralizing force.
80%
Idle Time
$100M+
Annual Waste
02
The Developer Tax: Protocol-Specific Circuits
Building a new app-specific chain or L3 means developing custom zk-circuits from scratch, a 6-12 month engineering effort. This fragments talent and slows innovation, as seen in the bespoke stacks of StarkEx apps and early Aztec contracts.
- Non-Portable Expertise: ZK engineers are locked into one proving system (e.g., Halo2, Plonky2).
- Reinventing the Wheel: Every team rebuilds common primitives (AMMs, bridges) in ZK.
6-12mo
Dev Time Added
10x
Engineering Cost
03
The Security Subsidy: Fragmented Trust Assumptions
Each new prover network requires its own trust-minimization bootstrap, diluting the security budget of the entire ecosystem. Users must now trust dozens of proving committees and data availability layers instead of a few battle-tested ones.
- Diluted Audits: Security scrutiny is spread thin across multiple codebases (e.g., RISC Zero, SP1, Jolt).
- Aggregated Risk: A failure in any one prover (like a soundness bug) can cascade, as seen in early zk-bridge hacks.
10x+
Trust Assumptions
High
Systemic Risk
04
The Solution: A Universal Proving Layer
A shared, generalized prover network—akin to AWS for zero-knowledge proofs—eliminates the fragmentation tax. It turns fixed costs into variable costs, enabling instant, cost-effective ZK for any chain or app.
- Massive Economies of Scale: Aggregated demand drives proving costs toward marginal electricity.
- Unified Security: A single, hyper-optimized and audited stack secures the entire ecosystem.
- Developer Abstraction: Write in any language (WASM, EVM, Move); the universal prover handles compilation.
-90%
Proving Cost
Instant
Chain Launch
deep-dive
THE FRAGMENTATION TAX
How Incompatible Circuits Kill Network Effects
Prover ecosystems that prioritize customizability over standardization impose a permanent tax on developer adoption and liquidity.
Prover fragmentation creates redundant work. Every new zkEVM or L2 with a custom proof system forces developers to rebuild tooling and security audits from scratch, mirroring the early EVM compatibility wars.
Liquidity follows the path of least friction. Users and capital consolidate on chains with shared proof infrastructure, like those using the same Plonky2 or Halo2 circuits, because bridging assets between incompatible systems adds latency and risk.
The market selects for standardization. Networks like Polygon zkEVM and Scroll, which prioritize EVM equivalence, attract developers by guaranteeing tooling portability, while highly customized chains become isolated islands.
Evidence: The Ethereum L2 ecosystem demonstrates that shared standards drive dominance; over 95% of TVL resides on EVM-compatible rollups, a pattern that will repeat in the zk-rollup layer.
THE COST OF FRAGMENTATION
The Proof System Fracture: A Comparative Snapshot
A direct comparison of leading zero-knowledge proof systems, highlighting the technical and economic trade-offs that create ecosystem silos.
| Feature / Metric | zkSync Era (ZK Stack) | Starknet (Cairo VM) | Polygon zkEVM | Scroll (zkEVM) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Proof System | PLONK / RedShift | STARK (Cairo) | zkEVM (Plonky2) | zkEVM (Halo2) |
Proving Time (Mainnet Block) | ~5 min | ~15 min | ~4 min | ~3 min |
Trusted Setup Required? | ||||
Native Account Abstraction | ||||
Bytecode-Level EVM Equivalence | ||||
Avg. Prover Cost per Tx (Est.) | $0.10 - $0.30 | $0.50 - $1.50 | $0.05 - $0.15 | $0.07 - $0.20 |
Prover Hardware (Primary) | CPU (GPU optional) | CPU | CPU/GPU Hybrid | CPU |
Prover Decentralization Roadmap | Phase 3 (2025) | Phase 2 (2024) | Phase 1 (2024) | Phase 2 (2024) |
counter-argument
THE FRAGMENTATION TRAP
The Steelman: Isn't Specialization Good?
Specialized provers create isolated performance silos that increase systemic risk and developer overhead.
Specialization creates protocol silos. A zkVM prover for one chain is useless for another, forcing teams to build redundant infrastructure. This is the prover fragmentation problem, mirroring the early L1 era where each chain needed its own block explorer and bridge.
Fragmentation increases systemic risk. A critical bug in a dominant prover like Risc Zero or Jolt could halt every chain that depends on it. Centralization on a few specialized tools contradicts crypto's resilience ethos, creating single points of failure.
Developer experience deteriorates. Teams must integrate and audit multiple proving backends (e.g., SP1 for one app, Gnark for another), increasing complexity. This is the tooling fragmentation that plagued Ethereum before the EVM standard.
Evidence: The bridging market shows the cost. LayerZero and Axelar compete to be the universal standard because managing 20 different bridge integrations is untenable for applications. Provers are repeating this mistake.
protocol-spotlight
THE COST OF FRAGMENTATION
Who's Building the Bridge?
A fractured prover market creates redundant work, security overhead, and massive capital inefficiency. These players are trying to unify it.
01
The Problem: Redundant Proof Work
Every new L2 spins up its own prover, re-implementing the same cryptographic primitives. This is a $100M+ annual waste in engineering and compute.
- Duplicated R&D on STARKs, SNARKs, and GPU acceleration.
- Fragmented Security Audits increase systemic risk.
- No economies of scale for hardware or proving services.
$100M+
Annual Waste
10+
Prover Codebases
02
The Solution: Shared Prover Networks
Projects like RiscZero, Succinct, and =nil; Foundation are building generalized proof systems. They act as a decentralized AWS for ZK proofs.
- Unified Security Model: One audited, battle-tested codebase for many chains.
- Cost Arbitrage: Provers compete on price, driving down L2 operational costs.
- Hardware Specialization: Enables dedicated proving farms for optimal throughput.
-90%
Dev Time
10x
Hardware Util.
03
The Problem: Capital Silos
Provers require staked capital for slashing/insurance. Fragmentation traps billions in idle capital across dozens of isolated networks.
- Inefficient Security Budgets: Each chain must bootstrap its own validator set.
- High Barrier to Entry: New L2s face a chicken-and-egg problem for prover decentralization.
- Liquidity Fragmentation mirrors the DEX problem of 2018.
$1B+
Idle Capital
20+
Staking Pools
04
The Solution: Restaking & Proof Markets
EigenLayer and Babylon enable ETH/BTC restaking to secure external systems. This creates a unified capital layer for shared security.
- Capital Efficiency: One stake secures multiple proving networks and L2s.
- Faster Bootstrapping: New chains tap into an existing pool of economic security.
- Yield Aggregation: Restakers earn fees from multiple proving services.
50x
Capital Leverage
-70%
Bootstrap Cost
05
The Problem: Vendor Lock-in & Centralization
L2s that outsource proving to a single entity (e.g., a specific prover-as-a-service) trade fragmentation for centralization risk. This creates single points of failure and censorship.
- Protocol Risk: Prover downtime halts the entire chain.
- Economic Capture: Prover can extract high rents once the L2 gains traction.
- Contradicts Crypto Values: Recreates the trusted third-party problem.
1
Failure Point
100%
Rent Extraction Risk
06
The Solution: Proof Aggregation Layers
Protocols like Avail and Espresso Systems are building layers that decouple execution from DA and proving. Celestia's approach inspires this modular thinking.
- Prover Agnosticism: L2s can choose or rotate between multiple proving networks.
- Fault Proofs & Fraud Games: Ensure liveness and correctness even with untrusted provers.
- True Decentralization: Creates a competitive market for proof generation and verification.
5+
Prover Options
0
Trust Assumptions
future-outlook
THE PROVER MARKET CORRECTION
The Path to Convergence: 2025 Outlook
The current fragmented prover landscape will consolidate as economic gravity forces specialization and integration.
Prover fragmentation is unsustainable. The proliferation of custom zkVMs from Polygon zkEVM to Scroll and zkSync Era creates redundant engineering overhead and security audits. This market will consolidate around a few dominant proof systems like RISC Zero, SP1, or Jolt.
Economic gravity dictates specialization. The capital and operational cost of running a prover network like Succinct or =nil; Foundation is immense. The market will split into infrastructure providers (e.g., RISC Zero) and application-specific rollups that license the tech, mirroring the AWS model.
The winning stack is modular. Convergence happens at the shared sequencer layer. Rollups like Arbitrum Orbit or OP Stack chains will plug into a neutral proving marketplace, creating a unified settlement layer where proofs are a commodity service, not a moat.
Evidence: The cost to generate a single ZK proof on Ethereum today exceeds $0.01. At scale, this forces rollups to seek proof aggregation services from protocols like Brevis coProcessors or Herodotus, making monolithic prover stacks obsolete.
takeaways
THE COST OF FRAGMENTATION
TL;DR: The Fragmentation Bill
The proliferation of specialized ZK provers is creating a multi-billion dollar inefficiency in blockchain infrastructure.
01
The Prover Tax
Every new ZK-rollup (Arbitrum Nova, zkSync, Starknet) requires its own prover, forcing developers to replicate hardware, engineering, and security audits. This is a $100M+ annual capital drain on the ecosystem, paid in venture funding instead of user value.\n- Capital Lockup: Dedicated hardware sits idle 90% of the time.\n- Talent Drain: Top cryptographers are siloed, not shared.
$100M+
Annual Waste
90%
Idle Hardware
02
The Security Moat Illusion
Teams believe a custom prover is a defensible moat. In reality, it's a single point of failure and a massive audit surface. A shared, battle-tested prover like Risc Zero or SP1 offers stronger collective security through constant adversarial testing.\n- Audit Fatigue: Each new circuit requires a new multi-million dollar audit.\n- Brittle Security: A bug in one obscure prover can collapse an entire chain.
1x
Audit Surface
100x
Attack Testing
03
The Interop Deadlock
Fragmented provers create walled gardens of liquidity. A proof from Prover A is meaningless to Bridge B. This kills native cross-rollup composability, forcing reliance on slow, trust-minimized bridges like Across or complex intent-based systems like UniswapX.\n- Latency Penalty: Finality delayed by hours for cross-chain proofs.\n- Liquidity Silos: Capital is trapped, reducing efficient market function.
2-4 hrs
Settlement Delay
30%+
Capital Inefficiency
04
The Solution: A Universal ZKVM
A single, general-purpose ZK Virtual Machine (e.g., Risc Zero, SP1) acts as a shared settlement layer for proofs. It turns prover development into software, not hardware, enabling proof aggregation and horizontal scaling. This is the endgame for EigenLayer AVS and alt-DA providers.\n- Economies of Scale: Hardware costs amortized across all chains.\n- Instant Composability: A single proof standard unlocks native cross-chain apps.
10x
Cost Reduction
~500ms
Proof Finality
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